Machine learning [Book Review]

95 Roughly speaking, machine learning is the problem of computing a mathematical rule that generalizes a relationship initially provided by a finite sample of real data. The problem of deducing a mathematical relationship between independent and dependent variables in an experiment is at the heart of both scientific research and much engineering practice. Machine learning is an area of statistics that when viewed in this light, is closely related to (but not contained in) the field of regression analysis. The two books reviewed here document many of the mathematical and algorithmic advances to date.